Sarthak Umang
Published on: November 10, 2022 at 18:53 IST
On Thursday, the Bombay High Court dismissed Chanda Kochhar’s application for interim relief in her suit against the bank.
The Bombay High Court has said that retrospective termination of former Chief Executive of the ICICI Bank, Chanda Kochhar in 2019 is prima facie “valid termination.”
Thus, the High Court dismissed her interim application in her suit against the bank seeking post-retirement benefits.
A single bench of Justice Riyaz Chagla restrained Kochhar in the interim order from dealing with ICICI’s 6,90,000 shares, which she had acquired through stock options between October 4, 2018 and December 11, 2018,
It was further directed for her to disclose all her transactions while dealing with the stocks on an affidavit within six weeks.
The bench observed that Kochhar had not come to court with “clean hands.”
In May 2018, ICICI Bank had set up a private enquiry against Kochhar following a complaint about her alleged role in granting out of turn loans worth Rs. 3,250 crore to the Videocon Group, which benefitted her husband Deepak Kochhar.
Further, Kochhar had proceeded on leave subsequently for many months. However, the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, does not provide for more than four months’ leave for Managing Director of a Bank.
Thus, Kochhar applied for early retirement, which was ultimately accepted.
However, the bank terminated Kochhar in January-February 2019 instead of early retiring her after discovering that she had violated the disclosure norms on conflicts of interest.
Her resignation in October 2018 was treated by the bank as a dismissal rather than a normal resignation.
Kochhar sued the bank after discovering that several benefits specified in her contract had not been provided to her.
On October 4, 2018, she claimed, the Bank accepted her early retirement and had unconditionally agreed to honour certain commitments and contractual obligations regarding her entitlements and benefits, from which it afterwards “wrongfully resiled.”
She further said that the Bank could not have terminated a person who had already retired.